Blog 197 Benediti to Porto

25th April

The headwind is so strong it’s blowing me backwards. I have my batteries on full blast and slowly I reach 25kph. The sun is shining and pretty clouds scurry along very fast, breaking and reforming but I am riding almost the length of a country that once led the world in naval exploration.

A Bit of Information - Portuguese Maritime Exploration

As a result of their intensive maritime journeys during the 15th and 16th centuries, Portuguese sailors were at the vanguard of European exploration. They chronicled and mapped the coasts of Africa and Asia, then known as the East Indies, and Canada and Brazil (the West Indies), in what came to be known as the Age of Discovery. Methodical expeditions started in 1419 along West Africa's coast under the sponsorship of prince Henry the Navigator, with Bartolomeu Dias reaching the Cape of Good Hope and entering the Indian Ocean in 1488. Ten years later, in 1498, Vasco da Gama led the first fleet around Africa to the Indian subcontinent, arriving in Calicut and starting a maritime route from Portugal to India. Portuguese explorations then proceeded to southeast Asia, where they reached Japan in 1542, forty-four years after their first arrival in India. In 1500, the Portuguese nobleman Pedro Álvares Cabral became the first European to discover Brazil.

Ferdinand Magellan

The Magellan Straits separating Tierra del

Fuego from the Chilean mainland was named

in his honour as he accomplished the first

navigation. I've crossed the Strait by motorbike

8 times.

So I arrived in Porto, along the promenade beside the beach. It was a lovely sunny day with a blue sky, how can it not be a good day.

Map of the Day